Relic 12
Artist
Hung Liu
(1948 - 2021)
Date2005
MediumOil on canvas and lacquered wood
Dimensions66 x 66 in. (66 1/8 x 66 1/8 x 1 3/4 in. framed)
ClassificationsOil Painting
Credit LineCharles F. Smith Fund
Object number2007.99
DescriptionThe female figure in this mural-size painting floats across the surface of the canvas, stretching from edge to edge. Although fully clothed, her pose is reminiscent of Western reclining female nudes, particularly Titian's "Venus of Urbino "(1538; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and, more pertinently, its nineteenth-century complement, Manet's "Olympia" (1863; Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The off-white ground recalls the play of whites in the bedclothes of both of those works and the pink of her kimono suggests their body tones. Both were courtesans, as was the woman in the photograph that inspired this painting. The directness of her gaze and the portrait quality of her features are particularly evocative of Manet's infamous work. All specificities of locale are removed in Liu's painting, liberating the figure from the confinement of her real-life circumstances, placing her instead in a sort of celestial garden. Liu relies strongly on symbolism to complete her transformative process. The central image-an attached resin-glazed panel in red-displays Chinese radicals in black.(1) Red is the color of celebration, used on such occasions as weddings.(2) In harsh contrast, the character translates as "slave."(3) Liu has replaced the black servant of Manet's "Olympia" with a spectacular blue butterfly, a traditional Chinese symbol of love. The flowers offered as a bouquet in the Manet are redefined as Chinese motifs and distributed across the figure and the space she inhabits, interspersed with circles-symbols of the universe that have become Liu's signature. Paint drips signify "both the 'unfreezing' of the image and the intervention of another woman, the painter, and another time, a permanent now."(4)
S.B.
NOTES:
1. Similar panels appear in all of Liu's "Female Radicals", a series that includes "Relicsz"; see Nancy Hoffman Gallery, "Hung Liu," http://www.nancyhoffmangallery.com/liu/2003.html (accessed August 28, 2010).
2. Ibid.
3. All the panels include the sign for "woman" combined with a sign that specifies the meaning. In this case, the right component of the character stands for "hand." The combination of "woman" and "hand" in Chinese signifies "slave." Chung-Lan Wang, art historian, to author, July 20, 2010.
4. Griselda Pollock, "Hung Liu: Odalisque," in Elaine H. Kim, Margo Machida, and Sharon Mizota, "Fresh Talk Daring Gazes" (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003), p. 120.
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